Fred Armisen
Fereydun Robert "Fred" Armisen (December 4, 1966, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, USA) is an American actor, comedian, writer, producer and musician best known as a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 2002 until 2013. Armisen has portrayed characters in comedy films, including EuroTrip, Anchorman and Cop Out. With his comedy partner Carrie Brownstein, Armisen is the co-creator and co-star of the IFC sketch comedy series Portlandia. Armisen founded ThunderAnt.com, a website that features the comedy sketches created with Brownstein, and is the bandleader and frequent drummer for the Late Night with Seth Meyers house band, The 8G Band. For his work on Portlandia, Armisen was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series in 2012, 2013 and 2014 and for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 2014. He has also won two Peabody Awards, one in 2008 as part of the Saturday Night Live political satire cast and one in 2011 for Portlandia. Armisen was born on December 4, 1966, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He moved with his family to New York as a baby and briefly lived in Brazil in his youth. He was raised in Valley Stream, New York, where he was a high school classmate of fellow SNL alumnus Jim Breuer. His mother, schoolteacher Hildegardt (Mirabal Level), is a Venezuelan immigrant who was born in San Fernando de Apure, Venezuela, and has family from San Rafael de Atamaica, Apure. His father, Fereydun Herbert "Fred" Armisen, who worked for IBM, was born in Soltau, Lower Saxony, Germany, to a German mother and Korean-born father, Pak Yeong-In. For much of his life, Fred had incorrectly thought his paternal grandfather to have been Japanese; his grandfather was actually born in Ulsan, Korea, and had adopted a Japanese name and persona after the massacre of Koreans in 1923 when he was a high school student. Pak was a prominent dancer and choreographer Ehara Masami (Japanese: 江原正美 Hepburn: Ehara Masami), better known by his professional pseudonym Masami Kuni (Japanese: 邦正美 Hepburn: Kuni Masami, or marked as Korean: 방정미; RR: Bang Jeongmi; MR: Pang Chŏngmi) or birth name Bak Yeong-in (Korean: 박영인; Hanja: 朴永仁; RR: Bak Yeongin; MR: Pak Yŏngin). Kuni studied aesthetics in Tokyo Imperial University and became a professional dancer before moving to Germany. He worked for Nazi Germany during WW2 but was a spy for the Empire of Japan in Europe. Pak Yeong-In's family were members of the Korean aristocracy, who could verifiably trace their lineage back to the 1600s. While not playing with the band Trenchmouth, Armisen's interests switched to acting. In a January 2006 interview, he said, "I wanted to be on TV somehow. For some reason, I always thought it would be an indirect route; I didn't know that it would be comedy and Saturday Night Live. I just wanted to do something with performing that would lead me there." Further television work included an appearance on Parks and Recreation in the 2009 episode "Sister City". For the Cartoon Network series The Looney Tunes Show (2011-2014), Armisen voices Speedy Gonzales. He and fellow Saturday Night Live alums Bill Hader and Seth Meyers write, produce, and star in the IFC mockumentary series Documentary Now! which premiered in 2015. Category:Actors from USA